Skaan.1423

What Hesa said, but with mounts in additiona to HoT masteries. With HoT masteries and mounts, HoT maps are the most amazing. And I don’t just mean in this game. I can’t recall maps this immersive in any other games I’ve ever played. If we ever get Cantha, I hope Echovald Forest is like HoT (and Jade Sea can be like PoF for players who want flatter maps). Cantha would be such a great continent for GW2's movement systems. Kaineng City and the Echovald Forest would be great places for verticality and for gliding/flying. Meanwhile, the Jade Sea could indeed be a great place for both open, wide terrains but also for some great underwater content (the Jade Sea did start to "melt" in some places afterall, if i remember right). And then Shing Jea Island could just be a nice, relaxing, relatively peaceful zone similar to areas like Queensdale. I so hope we will get a Cantha expansion sometime in the future. Is it still pretty much confirmed that it's not happening? I remember NCSoft being against it for some reason, but don't know if anything has changed since then.

That's something i also experience a lot. For example, i always tend to start at the same waypoint in Verdant Brink and go straight to the canopies, but always end up on a place i've never seen before.

For me, the reason gliding and flying makes it feel more like a real jungle, is because it allows you to interact with the environment a lot more and reach much more hidden/cool places compared to if you could only walk there. For example, when i was a kid, i loved playing in forests just because i loved climbing in trees and all that stuff and pretending to be Tarzan. You could argue that other MMO's also can give you this feeling, but their flying mounts are almost always just generic swim-in-the-air mounts, and those don't give you that rewarding/adventurous feeling that gliding and the griffon gives you. With gliding and griffon flight, it gives me similar feelings of soaring/swinging through a jungle and landing on random branches or structures in the air as opposed to just traveling on the ground. That's why i love these maps, they bring out the kid in me pretending to be Tarzan again.

I just thought i'd make a thread to show my appreciation for these maps, because i sometimes get the feeling the fun and beauty of these maps get overshadowed by discussion of the meta events or the difficulty of the mobs there. These maps are, in my opinion, the best jungle maps i've ever played in in a game. Lots of other games, especially MMO's, often have nice looking jungle maps aswell, but you don't really feel like you're exploring a jungle. It just feels like you're running around on a nice looking map with some nice jungle scenery in the background while you're fighting mobs. In GW2, due to the gliding, verticality of the map, mounts and mushrooms and stuff, you actually feel like you're exploring and traversing through a real jungle. Not to mention that the music is also beautiful and creates a very fitting atmosphere. Now with the addition of mounts, especially the griffon, it becomes even more fun. I often find myself going to Verdant Brink to soar through the skies and canopy on my griffon and then dive down and fly through the trees a bit, just because i find it so fun. I can understand that there won't be as much of a focus on map verticality anymore in future maps/expansions (like how i'm not expecting desert maps to have much verticality, for obvious reasons), but i just have to say that the huge focus on verticality in these jungle maps was definitely a great move and which made some very unique maps in the gaming world. I seem to remeber one of Anet's members mentioning something about how they focus on the joy of movement in the game and i can honestly say i find this to be the major selling point of GW2. The way they combine map design with player movement in mind always makes map exploration a joy. So i can't wait to see what they have in store with their next expansion. Not trying to sound fanboy-ish, i just always feel the need to give shout-outs whenever i have appreciation for something.